B5rewatch: Chrysalis
So we’ve reached the end of the season, and appropriately I started writing this on New Year’s, yes I’m getting slower it seems, but we’re here now.
1x22: Chrysalis
As for promo analysis, it’s bad. For making a big deal about how grand and big and important the episode is, the promo is slow and plodding. It also manages to be too spoilery and incredibly inaccurate. It didn’t have to show so much of the Shadow ships when they won’t show up until halfway through the episode, which is as much about how they come to that point as what happens after. And they push plot points together that have hardly anything to do with each other, as Garibaldi’s plot has little to do (except in the long game sense) with the Shadow story. Bad form promo monkey, bad form.
As this is basically the last time the Narn will be arguing from a position of strength, it’s notable and kind of uncomfortable (but realistic) to think that G’Kar’s words here will basically be coming out of Londo’s mouth before too long. The wheel turns does it not.
In the vein of ‘best not think too hard about it,’ how did Petrov even find Garibaldi to give the cryptic warning to? To practice a large dose of fanwnk-fu, if Pertov thought he couldn’t trust other people on staff in security or Medlab and so wasn’t willing to seek help from anyone but Garibaldi until he’d passed the message on (or tried to as it turned out) maybe it could be hammered to fit...some. With or without that I kind of have to go Occam’s Razor that the central corridor was the first (at least nearly first) place he went and got lucky Garibaldi was there. But I grant none of that’s justified in script.
One last time watching the s1 credits, and I don’t really have a thought. Although somewhat notable that even without the cast change obviously there would have had to be a change to the credits between seasons (but it is still 2258 at the time in the episode the credits roll), so I don’t see that the basic idea of a credits change came as a surprise.
You can tell JMS is back in the helm, other writers have Garibaldi want to wipe out all the lurkers and clean up downbelow, but this Garibaldi acknowledges that it’s a mess and there are perfectly good people in a bad situation. Yeah he really only *cares* when it’s one of his in some way, but it’s less assholey (which, how does spellcheck consider that a word?) this way.
We should all learn a lesson from TV, figure out how to say your crucial info in as few words as possible in case you get cut off.
I feel more for the Jeff/Catherine relationship when I marathon the show and it’s less drawn out with an awkward watching style as I have for these reviews. But it tells me as I kind of never have thought about before that people at the time probably didn’t have a great deal invested in the couple either. At some point I need to do a full meta on how it’s obvious Catherine was set up to have Anna’s role, but I have a hard time seeing it working any better if even as well, and seeing it slowly this time contributes to that. But for now, I really do like the proposal scene, it’s fun and sweet and mostly direct instead of making a big deal out of it.
The Londo-Vir scene is so full of iconic bits that I don’t really need to go into it, but I will observe that it’s very JMS that it’s basically a skit for a stage play, and the director (looking it up...not surprised it’s Janet Greek, I probably already knew that) clearly got that and filmed it in one shot up until Morden shows up on the monitor. And so it feels very B5; with the writing, directing, and acting solidly finding their feet.
It occurs to me (might have before but I’m noting for this go) that the telepath lurker almost certainly knew more than he told Garibaldi. If Pertrov was that terrified he was probably broadcasting everything. I don’t know that there was much he could have done to push the investigation along without tipping his hand but I also wonder if maybe he didn’t really care how this situation ended up and was just doing what part he does for Petrov’s sake. That or maybe he didn’t know Petrov at all and what he passed on was what he did pick up from some distance once Petrov was broadcasting everything but our lurker friend found a way to couch what he did know in a way that wouldn’t reveal how he learned it.
...Also, and this should have been obvious to me ages ago, that means Petrov found the jamming equipment then came back to downbelow before he started looking for Garibaldi, so that means he was probably shot topside. Interesting...
I do wonder about how quickly Londo came around to Morden’s proposal. He spends most of the conversation greeting it with skepticism and cynicism and incredulity, but in the end he does decide to go along with it. Maybe there’s a long period we don’t see of him sitting in the garden pondering whether to go through with it or not. I don’t think he ever worried to much about the price of doing so, more that he would look foolish if he told the Centaurum things that might not come true; and maybe the consequences of if it did happen occurred to him but he didn’t linger on them...so fic idea. Londo is a gambler after all.
While almost certainly done to avoid having to figure out how to get a breather on a Minbari head, and to allow fuller emoting by Mira in the scene, it kind of makes sense that Minbari would have more tolerance for other atmospheres, especially the Vorlons’. They’ve been Vorlon pets for so long it’s probably good if they can get by a little better in the Vorlon’s atmosphere.
I would like to think that Londo’s discomfort when he tells Vir to send the message is because he’s considered what it means, in terms of life and death consequences, but considering his later statements I’m not sure he had processed that part of the plan.
I mentioned several times at the start of the season how the replacement of Sinclair changed the relationship between G’Kar and the station commander, but you can see here that they would almost certainly have developed the more compassionate relationship G’Kar would have with Sheridan. You know it occurs to me I haven’t made racist-Jeff comments in a while, at least not in terms of how long it’s taken me to write about these episodes, so either good development or bad on me for dragging it out. But the scene is also very indicative of why JMS’ long running explanation for Sinclair’s departure rung so true, Sinclair here feels very finished, he’s too maxed out on wisdom to have much room to grow; there could be plots with him but growth would be a different matter.
Particularly watching it with modern, more cynical eyes, Garibaldi does seem to be setting himself up for a tragic end with his mini-speech about thinking about the good times and being happy for everyone. Also, his eyes are once again staggeringly blue.
I’m perfectly willing to not make a big thing out of this nitpick, but I would like to point out that Garibaldi talks about there being a stamp on an alloy harder than diamonds; that seems questionable.
It’s hard to call the attack on Q-37 as spaceship porn, since half the time you can’t see the spaceships, but they did save on the budget elsewhere to do a decent (if short) space...“fight” (it’s a massacre) scene here. Likely why they produced it mid-season, so they could be sure to have the money for it.
I wish they hadn’t had the Jack reveal be him on the link and just had him out of the blue shoot Garibaldi. Also, while it would have been a little off-tone for the scene I wish Garibaldi had said something to the effect of “Jack, do you need to get your eyes checked or something?” when he saw how easy the transmitters were to read, it would have probably helped sell them being friendly with each other; this is just about the first scene that’s ever seemed true in and could have had more done with it, plus we would have gotten Jack actually named on screen.
It has bothered me for a little while that the triluminary isn’t glowing whenever Delenn holds it, but I really notice in the scene when between Delenn and Valen you’d pretty much expect it to be lit up like the sun.
While s2 will show G’Kar does suspect the Shadows behind were involved in the attack on Q-37, I don’t know that that was the only thing his mind jumped to in the moment. This is a universe where new races and powerful ones appear or return without warning. The enemy this time doesn’t necessarily have to be the old ones of legend, although he clearly knows or quickly considers it a possibility. Here he says there’s something new, and I think that could have been a possibility to consider if checking out leads on old enemies hadn’t panned out.
I read something a while back that pointed out that on New Year’s Eve finding someone unconscious in a lift (Garibaldi wasn’t obviously bloody from that angle either) the reasonable assumption would be passed out not shot. So I often have a hard time watching that scene without considering the joke.
This is going to sound fairly poor on Lennier, but I wonder if seeing Delenn brought low was what made him fall in love with her. In some ways that’s not -too- bad, because to some extent he would have needed to see her as not quite so high above him (he can put her on a pedestal, but a more personal one rather than an engrained cultural attitude). But in others...yeah it’s a little iffy that seeing her as someone needing to be cared for probably was a big part of what changed things for him.
Yeah, watching this even on the computer makes it a lot more obvious had bad the effects in the core shuttle are.
The hedge maze seems like a really poor location to have secret meetings in, you’d never know who might be listening from where. Also, while I can believe Londo told himself Morden meant something less destructive, I can’t believe he actually didn’t consider Morden’s allies were just going wipe the Narn base out.
I waffle on how to interpret the other speaking security guy’s reaction to Jack’s story. I can’t decide if he felt intimidated to agree with Jack or he adopted the conclusion that Devereaux was responsible for shooting Garibaldi and therefore Jack was (in his opinion) justified in shooting Devereaux.
Lennier does kind of look like he’s suddenly aged about ten years from the start of the episode.
That after everything Londo’s done this episode, he shows up to watch over Garibaldi is very telling of why the character is so loved (especially in fandom, but it’s relevant in show) in spite of all he does. For all the awful choices he makes, all the terrible things he does, and the probably-unforgivable things he’s responsible for, we still love him, want to see him redeemed and accept that he can be forgiven. Because he does still care, and we’re shown that time and again, no matter how far he slides into darkness. Although I am curious how much of that opinion I will agree with watching with this much consideration.
So obviously, this is a pretty damn good episode, and it really holds up. Whether or not it is the best episode of the season is of course a matter of opinion, but it’s a fulcrum of the entire series. There have been plenty of escalating or progressing episodes, even other wham episodes, but this one is...well as people say in show, it’s at a crossroads, and it’s never the same afterwards.
The thing about being at a crossroads is in story it could have taken other roads, but it turned onto a very different path. Which to me really helps with the cast change next episode, the world has already changed so it doesn’t seem entirely wrong that it changes for us watching too. Not that that was the intent at the point this was written, but it works. Just about everyone’s path is changed from here, and that works well even before that happened.
For the humans it’s more about their world changing externally. It’s obviously drawing from the Kennedy assassination but since I don’t have the emotional investment in that, I draw more parallels to 9-11, and it...kind of is for this culture. I guess I end up thinking that more regarding the aftermath than the event itself, because I know where this story leads; one would wish real life hadn’t followed such a similar reaction. But it’s a pretty effective showing that JMS’ understanding of human behavior, and makes it all the more sadly easy to believe that we won’t change all that much in another 200 years.
The ambassadors I more see it in terms of them moving pretty substantially along their character arcs. Delenn, obviously, does so by entering the Chrysalis to change into new-Delenn; which, obviously, is a pretty important step in Delenn’s arc. Londo gets pulled fully into Morden’s plots that will define the rest of his arc. G’Kar’s is a bit more subtle and probably more evident in hindsight than the moment, but you can see the season’s worth of development even before the news of Q-37 comes in, he’s more ready to listen at least and more thoughtful, and when the news does come he grows a lot pretty quickly; he has to take that development and use it as he really hasn’t until now, it’s been there but not quite realized yet, and G’Kar will one day end up just about the more thoughtful person here.
But because I’m me, the one I feel the need to really examine is Delenn. Delenn’s conviction about her role in prophesy is something that sets her apart from the other characters; especially at this stage. But it’s made clear at several points that she really no clue what she’s doing, even here she’s well aware that she could die doing this. As a Minbari, especially of the Religious Caste, and double especially as one who has had Kosh in her life for years (probably pushing her towards the understanding of the role she is to play, but even if he wasn’t doing it with obvious intent that’s the effect a Vorlon hanging around her was going to have), for her the idea of trusting in faith and fate obviously isn’t going to be as foreign an idea to her as it is to me; but she usually displays a pretty reasoned understanding of what she’s doing and the potential consequences. And whenever I work on examining Delenn’s character, I always come away thinking about how the Inquisitor was a really dick move on Kosh’s part after he’d spent more than a decade creating Delenn to fill a role of his choosing in things to come; although I also think he had about a dozen ulterior motives besides having doubts about her at that stage. As this is a topic I come back to a lot, we’ll leave it there for now.
Next time: Well, that’s a bit more complicated than usual.
Like I said way back when I started putting together this list, season 1 was easy, season 2 is a lot harder to plan for, so here are my current thoughts on how to tackle all the EU material this re-trek through will involve.
-I am going to write a few post s1 meta posts to give me some time to get ahead with the EU stuff coming up, because I would like to get these posts on something like a schedule, I’ve just mostly been failing so far.
-I will keep a document open to take notes of my thoughts as I proceed through the comics or books.
-I think I will review the comics in two issue chunks (‘Price of Peace’ and ‘Shadows Past and Present’ series will be reviewed in two chunks each, and I’ll rope what I know about LMS in with the Psi Corps comic). I haven’t decided what I’ll do when I reach the last three in s4, but first we’ll see how this goes.
-I will break the books into ~50 page chunks when I post my thoughts, although they’ll obviously be unfinished until the book is done. It’ll be based on chapters and partially on how much I have to say/how quickly I’m making it through the material, but ~50 pages will be the aim.
-Since I started I have since found my season guides, but I still don’t think I’m going to do anything with them.
So, Next time: one more analysis of the episode ordering this season, and why the production order ended up just complicating things
1x22: Chrysalis
As for promo analysis, it’s bad. For making a big deal about how grand and big and important the episode is, the promo is slow and plodding. It also manages to be too spoilery and incredibly inaccurate. It didn’t have to show so much of the Shadow ships when they won’t show up until halfway through the episode, which is as much about how they come to that point as what happens after. And they push plot points together that have hardly anything to do with each other, as Garibaldi’s plot has little to do (except in the long game sense) with the Shadow story. Bad form promo monkey, bad form.
As this is basically the last time the Narn will be arguing from a position of strength, it’s notable and kind of uncomfortable (but realistic) to think that G’Kar’s words here will basically be coming out of Londo’s mouth before too long. The wheel turns does it not.
In the vein of ‘best not think too hard about it,’ how did Petrov even find Garibaldi to give the cryptic warning to? To practice a large dose of fanwnk-fu, if Pertov thought he couldn’t trust other people on staff in security or Medlab and so wasn’t willing to seek help from anyone but Garibaldi until he’d passed the message on (or tried to as it turned out) maybe it could be hammered to fit...some. With or without that I kind of have to go Occam’s Razor that the central corridor was the first (at least nearly first) place he went and got lucky Garibaldi was there. But I grant none of that’s justified in script.
One last time watching the s1 credits, and I don’t really have a thought. Although somewhat notable that even without the cast change obviously there would have had to be a change to the credits between seasons (but it is still 2258 at the time in the episode the credits roll), so I don’t see that the basic idea of a credits change came as a surprise.
You can tell JMS is back in the helm, other writers have Garibaldi want to wipe out all the lurkers and clean up downbelow, but this Garibaldi acknowledges that it’s a mess and there are perfectly good people in a bad situation. Yeah he really only *cares* when it’s one of his in some way, but it’s less assholey (which, how does spellcheck consider that a word?) this way.
We should all learn a lesson from TV, figure out how to say your crucial info in as few words as possible in case you get cut off.
I feel more for the Jeff/Catherine relationship when I marathon the show and it’s less drawn out with an awkward watching style as I have for these reviews. But it tells me as I kind of never have thought about before that people at the time probably didn’t have a great deal invested in the couple either. At some point I need to do a full meta on how it’s obvious Catherine was set up to have Anna’s role, but I have a hard time seeing it working any better if even as well, and seeing it slowly this time contributes to that. But for now, I really do like the proposal scene, it’s fun and sweet and mostly direct instead of making a big deal out of it.
The Londo-Vir scene is so full of iconic bits that I don’t really need to go into it, but I will observe that it’s very JMS that it’s basically a skit for a stage play, and the director (looking it up...not surprised it’s Janet Greek, I probably already knew that) clearly got that and filmed it in one shot up until Morden shows up on the monitor. And so it feels very B5; with the writing, directing, and acting solidly finding their feet.
It occurs to me (might have before but I’m noting for this go) that the telepath lurker almost certainly knew more than he told Garibaldi. If Pertrov was that terrified he was probably broadcasting everything. I don’t know that there was much he could have done to push the investigation along without tipping his hand but I also wonder if maybe he didn’t really care how this situation ended up and was just doing what part he does for Petrov’s sake. That or maybe he didn’t know Petrov at all and what he passed on was what he did pick up from some distance once Petrov was broadcasting everything but our lurker friend found a way to couch what he did know in a way that wouldn’t reveal how he learned it.
...Also, and this should have been obvious to me ages ago, that means Petrov found the jamming equipment then came back to downbelow before he started looking for Garibaldi, so that means he was probably shot topside. Interesting...
I do wonder about how quickly Londo came around to Morden’s proposal. He spends most of the conversation greeting it with skepticism and cynicism and incredulity, but in the end he does decide to go along with it. Maybe there’s a long period we don’t see of him sitting in the garden pondering whether to go through with it or not. I don’t think he ever worried to much about the price of doing so, more that he would look foolish if he told the Centaurum things that might not come true; and maybe the consequences of if it did happen occurred to him but he didn’t linger on them...so fic idea. Londo is a gambler after all.
While almost certainly done to avoid having to figure out how to get a breather on a Minbari head, and to allow fuller emoting by Mira in the scene, it kind of makes sense that Minbari would have more tolerance for other atmospheres, especially the Vorlons’. They’ve been Vorlon pets for so long it’s probably good if they can get by a little better in the Vorlon’s atmosphere.
I would like to think that Londo’s discomfort when he tells Vir to send the message is because he’s considered what it means, in terms of life and death consequences, but considering his later statements I’m not sure he had processed that part of the plan.
I mentioned several times at the start of the season how the replacement of Sinclair changed the relationship between G’Kar and the station commander, but you can see here that they would almost certainly have developed the more compassionate relationship G’Kar would have with Sheridan. You know it occurs to me I haven’t made racist-Jeff comments in a while, at least not in terms of how long it’s taken me to write about these episodes, so either good development or bad on me for dragging it out. But the scene is also very indicative of why JMS’ long running explanation for Sinclair’s departure rung so true, Sinclair here feels very finished, he’s too maxed out on wisdom to have much room to grow; there could be plots with him but growth would be a different matter.
Particularly watching it with modern, more cynical eyes, Garibaldi does seem to be setting himself up for a tragic end with his mini-speech about thinking about the good times and being happy for everyone. Also, his eyes are once again staggeringly blue.
I’m perfectly willing to not make a big thing out of this nitpick, but I would like to point out that Garibaldi talks about there being a stamp on an alloy harder than diamonds; that seems questionable.
It’s hard to call the attack on Q-37 as spaceship porn, since half the time you can’t see the spaceships, but they did save on the budget elsewhere to do a decent (if short) space...“fight” (it’s a massacre) scene here. Likely why they produced it mid-season, so they could be sure to have the money for it.
I wish they hadn’t had the Jack reveal be him on the link and just had him out of the blue shoot Garibaldi. Also, while it would have been a little off-tone for the scene I wish Garibaldi had said something to the effect of “Jack, do you need to get your eyes checked or something?” when he saw how easy the transmitters were to read, it would have probably helped sell them being friendly with each other; this is just about the first scene that’s ever seemed true in and could have had more done with it, plus we would have gotten Jack actually named on screen.
It has bothered me for a little while that the triluminary isn’t glowing whenever Delenn holds it, but I really notice in the scene when between Delenn and Valen you’d pretty much expect it to be lit up like the sun.
While s2 will show G’Kar does suspect the Shadows behind were involved in the attack on Q-37, I don’t know that that was the only thing his mind jumped to in the moment. This is a universe where new races and powerful ones appear or return without warning. The enemy this time doesn’t necessarily have to be the old ones of legend, although he clearly knows or quickly considers it a possibility. Here he says there’s something new, and I think that could have been a possibility to consider if checking out leads on old enemies hadn’t panned out.
I read something a while back that pointed out that on New Year’s Eve finding someone unconscious in a lift (Garibaldi wasn’t obviously bloody from that angle either) the reasonable assumption would be passed out not shot. So I often have a hard time watching that scene without considering the joke.
This is going to sound fairly poor on Lennier, but I wonder if seeing Delenn brought low was what made him fall in love with her. In some ways that’s not -too- bad, because to some extent he would have needed to see her as not quite so high above him (he can put her on a pedestal, but a more personal one rather than an engrained cultural attitude). But in others...yeah it’s a little iffy that seeing her as someone needing to be cared for probably was a big part of what changed things for him.
Yeah, watching this even on the computer makes it a lot more obvious had bad the effects in the core shuttle are.
The hedge maze seems like a really poor location to have secret meetings in, you’d never know who might be listening from where. Also, while I can believe Londo told himself Morden meant something less destructive, I can’t believe he actually didn’t consider Morden’s allies were just going wipe the Narn base out.
I waffle on how to interpret the other speaking security guy’s reaction to Jack’s story. I can’t decide if he felt intimidated to agree with Jack or he adopted the conclusion that Devereaux was responsible for shooting Garibaldi and therefore Jack was (in his opinion) justified in shooting Devereaux.
Lennier does kind of look like he’s suddenly aged about ten years from the start of the episode.
That after everything Londo’s done this episode, he shows up to watch over Garibaldi is very telling of why the character is so loved (especially in fandom, but it’s relevant in show) in spite of all he does. For all the awful choices he makes, all the terrible things he does, and the probably-unforgivable things he’s responsible for, we still love him, want to see him redeemed and accept that he can be forgiven. Because he does still care, and we’re shown that time and again, no matter how far he slides into darkness. Although I am curious how much of that opinion I will agree with watching with this much consideration.
So obviously, this is a pretty damn good episode, and it really holds up. Whether or not it is the best episode of the season is of course a matter of opinion, but it’s a fulcrum of the entire series. There have been plenty of escalating or progressing episodes, even other wham episodes, but this one is...well as people say in show, it’s at a crossroads, and it’s never the same afterwards.
The thing about being at a crossroads is in story it could have taken other roads, but it turned onto a very different path. Which to me really helps with the cast change next episode, the world has already changed so it doesn’t seem entirely wrong that it changes for us watching too. Not that that was the intent at the point this was written, but it works. Just about everyone’s path is changed from here, and that works well even before that happened.
For the humans it’s more about their world changing externally. It’s obviously drawing from the Kennedy assassination but since I don’t have the emotional investment in that, I draw more parallels to 9-11, and it...kind of is for this culture. I guess I end up thinking that more regarding the aftermath than the event itself, because I know where this story leads; one would wish real life hadn’t followed such a similar reaction. But it’s a pretty effective showing that JMS’ understanding of human behavior, and makes it all the more sadly easy to believe that we won’t change all that much in another 200 years.
The ambassadors I more see it in terms of them moving pretty substantially along their character arcs. Delenn, obviously, does so by entering the Chrysalis to change into new-Delenn; which, obviously, is a pretty important step in Delenn’s arc. Londo gets pulled fully into Morden’s plots that will define the rest of his arc. G’Kar’s is a bit more subtle and probably more evident in hindsight than the moment, but you can see the season’s worth of development even before the news of Q-37 comes in, he’s more ready to listen at least and more thoughtful, and when the news does come he grows a lot pretty quickly; he has to take that development and use it as he really hasn’t until now, it’s been there but not quite realized yet, and G’Kar will one day end up just about the more thoughtful person here.
But because I’m me, the one I feel the need to really examine is Delenn. Delenn’s conviction about her role in prophesy is something that sets her apart from the other characters; especially at this stage. But it’s made clear at several points that she really no clue what she’s doing, even here she’s well aware that she could die doing this. As a Minbari, especially of the Religious Caste, and double especially as one who has had Kosh in her life for years (probably pushing her towards the understanding of the role she is to play, but even if he wasn’t doing it with obvious intent that’s the effect a Vorlon hanging around her was going to have), for her the idea of trusting in faith and fate obviously isn’t going to be as foreign an idea to her as it is to me; but she usually displays a pretty reasoned understanding of what she’s doing and the potential consequences. And whenever I work on examining Delenn’s character, I always come away thinking about how the Inquisitor was a really dick move on Kosh’s part after he’d spent more than a decade creating Delenn to fill a role of his choosing in things to come; although I also think he had about a dozen ulterior motives besides having doubts about her at that stage. As this is a topic I come back to a lot, we’ll leave it there for now.
Next time: Well, that’s a bit more complicated than usual.
Like I said way back when I started putting together this list, season 1 was easy, season 2 is a lot harder to plan for, so here are my current thoughts on how to tackle all the EU material this re-trek through will involve.
-I am going to write a few post s1 meta posts to give me some time to get ahead with the EU stuff coming up, because I would like to get these posts on something like a schedule, I’ve just mostly been failing so far.
-I will keep a document open to take notes of my thoughts as I proceed through the comics or books.
-I think I will review the comics in two issue chunks (‘Price of Peace’ and ‘Shadows Past and Present’ series will be reviewed in two chunks each, and I’ll rope what I know about LMS in with the Psi Corps comic). I haven’t decided what I’ll do when I reach the last three in s4, but first we’ll see how this goes.
-I will break the books into ~50 page chunks when I post my thoughts, although they’ll obviously be unfinished until the book is done. It’ll be based on chapters and partially on how much I have to say/how quickly I’m making it through the material, but ~50 pages will be the aim.
-Since I started I have since found my season guides, but I still don’t think I’m going to do anything with them.
So, Next time: one more analysis of the episode ordering this season, and why the production order ended up just complicating things